Messier offers top C-Plus job to Farrugia
Lescure lieutenant mulls peace offer
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Messier has asked Farrugia, currently director of programs at the paybox, to become president of Canal Plus SA, reporting to the new group president Xavier Couture, the former TF1 exec who has replaced Lescure.
Lescure was fired April 16 as head of both Canal Plus Group and Canal Plus SA.
"If it's just a symbolic position, Dominique will refuse," a Canal insider told Daily Variety. "But if it gives him a real chance to develop Canal, he'll take the job."
As Messier gets ready to helm the much-anticipated Viv U annual shareholders meeting Wednesday from the stage of the Zenith Theater in Paris – a venue associated more with rock concerts than financial assemblies – the man who declared that the "French cultural exception is dead" is apparently making a last ditch attempt to appease irate Canal brass.
Though one Vivendi flack stated, "We don't expect a happening," over 5000 shareholders are expected to attend tomorrow's meeting, many of them Canal employees still reeling from Messier's abrupt sacking of Lescure.
Canal insiders say that those who can't get into the Zenith will picket outside. The Vivendi Universal invitation indicates alternate access routes, possibly so attendees can avoid protesters and police barricades.
As the other Jean-Marie – National Front presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen – bumped Messier off the front page with his shocking victory in the election's first go-round Sunday, the Viv U CEO received Canal union reps and celebrities in his office overlooking the Arc de Triomphe.
"He promised us everything," Gerard Chollet, head of Canal's largest union, stated sarcastically to Daily Variety. "That the channel would remain intact, that we'd have editorial freedom."
When the Canal employees expressed their contempt for Couture, the choice of whom, they said, represented "a casting error," Messier asked whom they would like to see replace Lescure at the French channel.
They suggested Alain De Greef, whom Couture had earlier asked to be his advisor, or Farrugia.
Canal players also met Monday with the Conseil Superieur d'Audiovisual, the French broadcasting authority that grilled Messier and Lescure last week.
Union reps told the CSA they want assurance that Canal's subscriber list will become the property of Canal Plus SA and that the channel will be granted sufficient resources to guarantee its operations without jeopardizing its structure and editorial autonomy.
The CSA also received reps Monday from the Gallic film industry's three major professional associations.
"We had the feeling we were really listened to and that the CSA shared our point of view," Pascal Rogard, head of the powerful authors, directors and producers lobbying group, ARP, told Daily Variety.
A CSA spokeperson said that the CSA was sending Messier a letter asking him to guarantee in writing Canal Plus's present accords with the French film industry.
"We want this resolved before Cannes," Rogard said. "We're not asking for anything new, we just want to make sure the engagements that are already in place between Canal Plus and the film industry are secure."
The associations want Canal's present agreements - which run through the end of 2004 and cover the paybox's financial obligation to French film production and distribution – to be inscribed in a pact with the CSA rather than in the present contract made between Canal and Vivendi at the time of their merger in December 2000.
"That way the CSA will have the legal authority to make sure these accords are adhered to," Rogard explained.
The associations also asked for assurances that Canal would continue to acquire films during the transition period and that Canal would not separate its editorial and distribution functions.
Gearing up for the shareholders' meeting, Colette Neuville, the president of the Viv U minority shareholders defense association, sent Messier a list of questions that must legally be answered at the assembly.
These include the definition of the company's net financial debt as used in the calculation of Viv U's debt over five years, the amount of Messier's gross salary, and whether Messier is taxed in the U.S. or France.
On Tuesday, meanwhile, Canal Plus employees took out a full page ad in French daily Liberation, which portrayed a scowling, Elvis-coiffed Lescure clad in a leather jacket, his fist drawn menacingly in front of his chest.
"You call this a boss?" the copy read. "We do! And, what's more, we want to keep him!"
